On Feb 12, 9:36 am, "Kevin M." <[email protected]> wrote:
> Something people forget about the early days of Saturday Night (and
> Letterman's Late Night, for that matter) was that nobody figured the
> timeslot to be a money maker. It allowed them to experiment with new
> acts and new performers, and a lot of the experiments failed. But,
> eventually, NBC started to take notice of the ratings and then they
> took notice of their own programing. I don't know if NBC sold SNL up
> the river, or if Lorne Michaels ultimately whored himself out when he
> returned as EP in the 1980s, but by the mid to late 1980s, the show
> had transitioned out of the counterculture and into the mainstream,
> where it has loitered ever since, wasting 90 minutes of valuable
> broadcast airtime.
You can pinpoint to when Dick Ebersol replaced Jean Doumanian after
her disastrous season. She had booked musical guests for the last few
years of the original Michaels run and her tastes ran to whatever was
big at CBGB's. When Ebersol took over, he flat out said, "we're only
booking arena acts," with Michael O'Donaghue no doubt wincing. Still,
O'Donaghue sneaked on Fear ("John Belushi's favorite band") and when
the audience either started mosh pitting or destroying the studio
(depending on your view), Ebersol ordered Davey Wilson to rack up a
film and fade out. At which point O'Donaghue's tenure on the show was
numbered--and he responded by writing "Silverman in the Bunker," which
pretty much sealed the deal.
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